Dr. Trevor Davis provides commentary on the excitement and usefulness of social media in his ZDNet post titled Listen to social media and find out what’s trending

‎Lara O’Reilly of MarketingWeek says that Brands can’t afford to #fail when it comes to social media crisis… in her latest report.

Allie Gray Freeland gives MarketingProfs readers a lesson in PR 2.0 in this slide show named Five Tips for Online Public Relations Success

IT Web journalist Kathryn McConnachie reports on Google’s video sharing platform unveiling a new homepage, channel design and user interface in YouTube Gets a Makeover

Huffington Post blogger Philip Keightley provides ringside commentary in Let’s Get Ready to Rumble: Facebook versus Google+ in the Battle for Social Media Hearts and Minds

Who Are the Top 10 Influencers in Social Media? Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessy shows how some influencers have the reach and pull as media outlets.

Ed Lundquist gives 10 Social Networking Tips For CIOs on InformationWeek as he explains why adding a robust enterprise social network to your priority agenda is a must, and how to get going.

Armondo Roggio provides insight on how the continued growth of social networking and blog sites have an effect on brand marketing, consumer shopping behavior and innovation  - 3 Ways Social Media Affects Brands via Practical eCommerce.

Well, if you follow me on Twitter and were on this weekend, you likely heard about my recent experience with Toyota and specifically, McGee Toyota in Hanover, MA. It wasn’t pretty. So here’s my haiku for you based on my weekend – if you’d like the full story, read my blog post about the experience – and why it’s crucial for your sales team to understand that customer relationships are way more valuable than customer deals.

Toyota was wrong
Happy customers tell friends
Angry ones tell all

Now that the negative one is out of the way, here are two positive ones – because happy customers should share loudly, too.

Jet Blue I love you
Thanks for TVs and smiles
You get customers

Ideeli is cool
They sell lovely things to me
And they engage me

Follow the brand haiku to Bryan Person and his tribute to Nike, and see more haikus from those amazing marketers by watching Twitter for the hashtag #brandhaiku.

Thanks for the fun, creative and great idea – and invitation – Aaron! Readers, if you have a brand haiku, please play along in the comment section and on Twitter.

Are you a social media addict?
Following along with a similar topic to my first pick, Scott Kleinberg from the ChicagoNow’s Redeye blog shares five fun signs that you might be a social media addict.

A Framework for Branding Through Social Media
Jordan Julien suggests five methods of communicating with your online communities to better map out your social media strategies.

7 Reasons Social Media Is A No-Brainer For Passionate B2C Brands
B2C brands that are still hesitant to make the plunge into social media might benefit from Adam Singer’s seven reasons to jump in sooner rather than later.

Using Classic PR Techniques To Support Brands In Social Networks
Marty Weintraub shares seven existing PR channels that can be leveraged to help feed information into a social media presence on a regular basis.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
Be sure to set aside an hour to watch this one. Its well worth it and gives a very detailed and interesting look at the birth and success of the YouTube phenomena.

Marketing 103: Jeff Pulver’s e-mail Marketing Tips
Jeff Pulver shares a plethora of practical e-mail marketing tips based on 13 years of personal experience as a parallel/serial entrepreneur. Extend your e-mail marketing knowledge with additional tips directly from Constant Contact (PerkettPR client).

Twitter Brand Index
A tremendous number of brands are finding their way onto Twitter and there are a wide variety of opinions on how brand activity on Twitter should be approached. While the topic will continue to be up for debate, Jonathan Kash shares his extensive list of brands that are currently on Twitter. By the way, PerkettPR is one of those brands. How are we doing?

Track Your Time with LEGO Bricks
I’ll finish up this week’s picks with something a little light and somewhat humorous. Gina Trapani from LifeHacker.com shares one developer’s take on keeping track of the time spent of various project using Legos instead of more traditional time tracking methods!